Really? Really, Wisconsin? I'm resigned to the 6-month winters. I'm resigned to the weeks when the wind chill dips to -30. I'm resigned to the fact that the University will never, ever close for the cold, and that when the public schools are closed and the undergraduates decide to just skip class, I will always, always have to bundle up and wait for the buses (which are running late, but of course you can't count on that, so just when the weather is the worst, you have to stand around outside, not moving, blasted by wind, your nose hairs, eyelashes, and contact lenses freezing, for longer than when it's nice out) and trudge down the icy wind tunnel that is N. Park St. and spend my day in a building shaped like a parking garage. This is the price of being a grad student in Wisconsin. Fine.
But when I put up with all of this, early in the morning, and I arrive at HCW *before* having my coffee, and I shed my layers and begin the slow process of bringing feeling back into all of my exposed skin for a long day of talking about books, I do NOT appreciate...
A. Fucking. Fire. Drill.
A 9:15 in the morning fire drill. With the wind chills outside at -28. Yep. I expected to get bent over, Wisconsin; I just didn't expect to get bent over this hard.
Taking a hard left here, the season finale of Lost is re-airing right now, in anticipation of the season premiere tomorrow night. They're trying to attract new viewers, which is a difficult thing to do with a continuous narrative. Close to 75 episodes have already been aired that build secrets and revelations on top of the ones that came before. To solve this problem, it seems, the producers (stand-ins? I think the real ones are on the strike) are re-airing this one 2-hour episode with a little scroll bar along the bottom that fills in the background. So, while Charlie's being tortured in the Looking Glass, the scroll bar reads: Charlie is a former rock star who's being tortured by the Looking Glass sisters because he's trying to un-jam the blocking frequency of the Others, but he already knows he's going to die because of Desmond's prophecy that he will die trying to save Claire, who's the blonde Aussie chick with the baby.
Seriously? This can't be working for people. Four things in that one convoluted sentence alone need explaining to even make sense. It's like watching a crazy-ass pop-up video, only you have to remember all the seemingly unrelated information and plug it together. Also, there's so much reading it's hard to follow what's going on in the actual episode. I want more Lost viewers as much as the next guy, but... um. There are a bajillion characters. Give or take umpteen.
OMG LOST PREMIERE TOMORROW.
And because I guess I'm just going errata-style here: While trudging up the walk to my apartment tonight, a helicopter with a searchlight flew overhead. I gotta say... I really hope they find who they're looking for. I'm pretty fucking terrified of anybody bad-ass to go on the lam in -30 wind chills. That's beyond bad-ass.
Moving on again: I love Prof. S. And I love his class. Most things about it. But one of the things I love (even though it's not actually lovable) is the way he doesn't actually answer questions.
Me: Prof. S., I have a somewhat historical-contextual question about the novel, that might be open to interpretation but that I'm just looking for some of your insight on. It's X.
Prof. S.: When I was a boy, my dad gave me a $2 bill and I still have it.
....
Prof. S.: So, any thoughts on an unrelated topic?
It's kinda awesome. Seriously.
It's gonna be a good semester. I think I'm figuring out how to do this grad school thing. Slowly.
30 January 2008
19 January 2008
15 January 2008
Back by popular demand: blogging. Back by grudging concession to the inevitable: the semester.
Welcome back. There are no new year's resolutions, but perhaps this is a resolution that could be put on some kind of ballot.
Proposal: Professors assigning a full week of reading to be done for the first class... is cheating. The academic calendar reports the semester starts January 22. All days prior to January 22 ought to be part of my vacation. If you can't shoehorn all the readings you want into the normal number of weeks in the semester, that's not my problem.
Corollary: Creating bonus seminar meetings during the regular semester is also a violation of my graduate student rights (hahaha), particularly when you hold them during finals week and require every single class member to give a presentation on extra reading, unrelated to their term papers, and allow the bonus session to go FOUR HOURS. (This, you may have heard, was one of many--but a particularly cruel--source of my end-of-semester ire this fall. I have four words for you: Don't. Take. Art. History.)
Exception: Classes held on Mondays. The semester starts on a Tuesday, so my Shakespare seminar doesn't meet until week 2, which means I won't even do the "advance" reading until classes have already started. This is acceptable, especially because the whacked out academic calendar screws this professor out of a week all the others get. In fact, "advance" ("bonus") reading should be reserved only for Monday professors, to allow them to catch up. The rest of you are just reinforcing an inequality!!
So, as you might infer, my vacation is drawing to its end. I know this because tomorrow I'm going to start reading Sister Carrie. The resumption of my work means I will be taking up blogging again, my age-old procrastination device. Since it's still technically my vacation and I lack the will to really summarize the end of my semester and my vacation thus far, I give you a haiku roundup:
-----------------------------
And if you made it this far, here is a slightly different, perhaps more profound summary of last semester: some randomly generated haiku assembled from rearranged blog entries in the recent past. You can have your own made here.
and my favorite:
and one i made from becca's blog that was too good not to share:
Here's to a new semester of feeling just shy of miserable.
Proposal: Professors assigning a full week of reading to be done for the first class... is cheating. The academic calendar reports the semester starts January 22. All days prior to January 22 ought to be part of my vacation. If you can't shoehorn all the readings you want into the normal number of weeks in the semester, that's not my problem.
Corollary: Creating bonus seminar meetings during the regular semester is also a violation of my graduate student rights (hahaha), particularly when you hold them during finals week and require every single class member to give a presentation on extra reading, unrelated to their term papers, and allow the bonus session to go FOUR HOURS. (This, you may have heard, was one of many--but a particularly cruel--source of my end-of-semester ire this fall. I have four words for you: Don't. Take. Art. History.)
Exception: Classes held on Mondays. The semester starts on a Tuesday, so my Shakespare seminar doesn't meet until week 2, which means I won't even do the "advance" reading until classes have already started. This is acceptable, especially because the whacked out academic calendar screws this professor out of a week all the others get. In fact, "advance" ("bonus") reading should be reserved only for Monday professors, to allow them to catch up. The rest of you are just reinforcing an inequality!!
So, as you might infer, my vacation is drawing to its end. I know this because tomorrow I'm going to start reading Sister Carrie. The resumption of my work means I will be taking up blogging again, my age-old procrastination device. Since it's still technically my vacation and I lack the will to really summarize the end of my semester and my vacation thus far, I give you a haiku roundup:
Just 'cause I didn't
fail doesn't mean I didn't
embarrass myself.
One-day term paper:
surprisingly effective
self-punching technique.
You actually can
go home again. You just have
to bring Valium.
Nobody throws a
party like my college friends'
all-nighter, black-out--
Hate everyone else
already; yuppie parties
make me hate myself.
Connecticut, you
are small and pretty but you
have I-95.
Beer and snow. Never
thought I'd say it: Wisconsin,
home sweet fucking home.
-----------------------------
And if you made it this far, here is a slightly different, perhaps more profound summary of last semester: some randomly generated haiku assembled from rearranged blog entries in the recent past. You can have your own made here.
i now see that if
i worked for the next two
hours without stopping
it's comfy it
has a sofa and a list
of prepositions
been in madison
like she never left like a
big lake almost 10
going to come the
fuck on i know it's the
easy part i hate
on the bus okay
look the bus will fill up and
you won't hear me
induced optimism
today is the second type
this takes the form
waiting look at that
list and think this is a case
of wikipedia
it was kinda cool
i liked doing it and
before you know it
hear is full of snow
and ice and if you don't
answer my questions
no it's not like
to touch strangers to pay the
price of touching them
where the hell did i
read this now i have to write
resigned to the fact
my mouth and it's a
store of life experience
of good waste to have
they start to sound like
sense and then there's grunting
and a couple of
and my favorite:
below the surface
of coherence he made two
fists and flailed them
and one i made from becca's blog that was too good not to share:
really wanted
this paper to be done but
i chickened out
Here's to a new semester of feeling just shy of miserable.
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